Spring on the coast: what rain does to a schedule
The machines still work. The ground does not. Planning around a wet March is its own skill.
Nobody in the Lower Mainland is surprised by rain. Everybody is surprised by what a fortnight of it does to a site that was fine in February.
Water does not carry load
Saturated ground has less bearing capacity than the same ground dry. That is the whole mechanism. It is why the haul route that held all winter starts rutting in a week, and why the pad you compacted properly in the fall is suddenly moving under a loaded truck.
And rutting compounds. A rut holds water. Water softens the ground further. The next pass digs the rut deeper. By the time it is obviously a problem, the fix is no longer grading — it is rebuilding the route.
What actually helps
- Get the water off firstDrainage before machines. An hour with a grade and a ditch beats a day of recovery.
- Build one route and defend itTraffic that wanders spreads the damage across the whole site. One route, matted if it needs it, keeps the mess in one place.
- Spread the loadTracks, wider pads, or mats. Ground pressure is the lever that matters here.
- Sequence for the weather, not the planThe dry-ground work moves to the dry days. The indoor and hard-standing work fills the wet ones.
- Stop before you are stuckThe last two hours of a bad day usually cost more than they earn. A recovery costs a day and a favour.
Why this is a rental argument
This is the season where a fleet you own is the wrong shape. You need flotation for six weeks, and then you do not. Buying tracks for March is an expensive way to solve a March problem.
Swap up or down as the job changes. That sentence is on our rental page because this is the month it means something.
The honest bit
We cannot make your site dry. What we can do is send iron with a footprint that suits it, and tell you plainly when the machine you asked for is going to struggle. Tell us how wet it is. We have seen the season before.
